Necrophenia

  ‘You have them,’ he said, in a hushed and awestruck tone. ‘As it was prophesied. In a different prophecy altogether. The one about the coming of the Special One. You have the sacred tools.’ And he pulled out a stick of dynamite. Which made me flinch somewhat. But there weren’t any naked flames about, so I relaxed slightly.

  ‘You have them!’ he cried, in an exalted fashion.

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘And they’re mine, so be careful.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir, yes.’ And he stroked the stick of dynamite. ‘The Little Stick of Blackpool Rock,’ he said.

  And I remembered that song well enough - I’d rehearsed that particular George Formby number a goodly number of times in the music room of Southcross Road School.

  And the priest laid out the six sticks of dynamite. ‘One for each of the ministers of the church,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. What is this all about? I thought.

  And then his hands were once more inside my rucksack. In a rather intimate manner, I thought. Although I suppose it had never occurred to me that one could get all precious about the contents of a rucksack. But then I’d never owned one before.

  ‘And yes!’ cried the priest. ‘You do have it. The sacred strummupon. The Instrument of God.’ And he drew out the ukulele that Mr Ashbury Molesworth had sold to me as a useful means of passing the time when trapped hopelessly far beneath ground level.

  ‘That’s also mine,’ I said. And I took it from his hands.

  ‘And so,’ he said, in a breathless fashion, ‘can you strum the holy hymns upon the sacred strum-upon?’

  ‘Can I!’ said I.

  ‘Well, can you?’ said he.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ said I. ‘Would you care for me to sing you a song?’

  And the priest was speechless. But he nodded. And then he said, ‘Sing one of the holy hymns of the George. Oh yes.’

  And I took to checking whether the uke was in tune.

  ‘It’s G, C, E and A,’ I explained. ‘Or as we musicians say, my dog has fleas.’

  And his head bobbed up and down.

  And I said, ‘Okay, it’s in tune. So what would you like to hear?’

  And the priest just turned up the palms of his hands and said, ‘Anything, Lord sir.’

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ I said. ‘In that case I will play one of my own compositions. I wrote this number in my head, when I lay in a coma in a hospital bed. But you don’t need to concern yourself with that. I wrote it for one of my favourite authors. He is known as the Father of Far-Fetched Fiction and his name is Robert Rankin.’

  The priest viewed me, blankly.

  ‘Well, he is something of an acquired taste. But I wrote this song for him to sing. And it is sung to the tune of George Formby’s “When I’m Cleaning Windows”.’

  ‘It’s called—’

  WRITING FAR-FETCHED FICTION

  ‘And it goes something like this.’ And I played and I sang. And it sounded something like this. To the tune of ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’.

  Now I write Far-Fetched Fiction

  To earn a couple of bob.

  For a lazy blighter

  It’s really the ideal job.

  I sit in pubs for hours and hours

  I drink Harveys, I drink Flowers,

  Then I go home for golden showers.

  Writing Far-Fetched Fiction.

  I sit about and sit about

  I sometimes get my ballpoint out.

  That really makes the barmaid shout.

  Writing Far-Fetched Fiction.

  In my profession I work hard

  But no one gives a *uck.

  It’s blinking J.K. Rowling

  Who rakes in every buck.

  I drink until my guts explode

  I stumble drunken down the road

  I wish I’d written The Da Vinci Code

  Instead of Far-Fetched Fiction.

  (Ukulele solo, with much finger-picking,

  cross-strums and scale-runs, not to mention

  an effective use of grace notes and chromatics.)

  In my profession I work hard,

  Well no, perhaps I don’t.

  I bet I’ll win a Nobel Prize,

  Well no, perhaps I won’t.

  But like the Murphy’s, I’m not bitter

  As long as I can raise a titter.

  I think I’ll pop out to the *hitter

  And write some Far-Fetched Fiction.

  Thank you very much.

  And the priest just stood there. Speechless.

  And then he cried, ‘Off with this head.’

  Which I didn’t like too much.

  61

  And then, oh how we laughed.

  Because, can you believe this, he was winding me up, that priest. Having a laugh. And he clapped his hands together and told me that it was a beautiful song, so beautiful, in fact, that the George himself might have written it. And he commented upon the quality of the lyrics and enquired what the phrase golden showers meant.

  And I told him.

  And he nodded and said that he was rather keen on that kind of thing himself. But then as everything was golden hereabouts, what was I to expect? And then he begged me to play some more. And so I did.

  I did straight, classic George this time. ‘Leaning on a Lamp Post’, ‘Grandad’s Flannelette Nightshirt’, ‘Riding in the T. T. Races’, and of course ‘Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’. To which the priest waved one of my sticks of dynamite about and I had to stop playing and ask him to put it down.

  But my performance drew much applause, especially from the golden girlies, who were still kneeling down all around me. And I figured that I was definitely going to get some hot group-groupie action later on.

  Or as soon as possible, if the chance arose.

  And the priest wanted more, but I told him that enough was enough for now and that I was actually a bit hungry, because it had been a trying day and I wouldn’t say no to a good sit down and some tucker. And the priest said that yes, there should be a celebrational banquet to greet the arrival of the Special One, and he clapped his hands together and got some of his underlings straight onto the job.

  And I gazed upon these golden people and considered that perhaps now my luck was in and that if things worked out, they could very well soon be my golden people.

  And I recalled, well enough, that the name George Formby became, by anagram, Orgy of Begrem, so things were looking up. And they might work out.

  But what, I did have to ask myself, was all this Formby nonsense all about? They literally seemed to worship the Duke of the Uke.

  And then thoughts came to me of a conversation I had engaged in as a child with Captain Lynch. Who it seemed had taught me oh so much. It had been about the Melanesian cargo cult of Jon Frum. During the Second World War, the Americans set up an airstrip at Tanna, an island in Vanuatu, Melanesia. Planes flew in delivering all manner of cargo and the natives, who had never seen anything like this before, sat down and gave the matter a jolly good thinking about. And then drew some logical conclusions.

  It was clear to them that these Americans were in touch with Flying Gods who brought them cargo, and that they had built the airstrip to lure down the aeroplanes of the Gods.

  And so the natives built their own airstrip next door to the real one. And they dressed up in pretend American uniforms and imitated all the things the Americans did. And waited for their planes with their cargo to land. And they got it into their heads that the pilot, the Godly sky pilot who brought the cargo, was called Jon Frum. And they set up shrines to him and lit candles.

  Of course, no aeroplane ever did land on their pretend airship and after the war the Americans went home and no more planes at all landed. But the natives never gave up hope. They maintained their airstrip and went through the magical motions.

  I recall seeing a TV documentary about Tanna and the Jon Frum cargo cult, and this smart-arsed Christian reporter was interviewing an old cargo-cult priest. And he said to this pries
t—

  ‘How long have you been waiting for Jon Frum’s return?’

  And the priest said, ‘Twenty years now.’

  And the Christian reporter said, ‘Then don’t you think that perhaps you should give up? Because he’s clearly not coming back.’

  And the old priest said, ‘But you have been awaiting the return of your Jon Frum for nearly two thousand years.’

  And the interview went no further.

  And I remember that it really tickled me at the time.

  And so I assumed that this George Formby business must be something like that. But exactly how had it come to pass?

  Now that was a question.

  And it was one that I put to the priest - the high priest, he was - over dinner.

  And dinner was served in the big royal dining room, on the big royal dining table, from all the very best royal plates. The gold ones. And there were thirty or so of Begrem’s top bods seated about that table and I was issued with three scantily-clad golden girlies to attend to my every need. But, not wishing to take any risks regarding protocol, I didn’t get any of them to administer to certain manly needs in an oral fashion from underneath the table.

  The food was, happily, not of gold. It wasn’t too heavy on meat, but it was pretty big on mushrooms. And there were things in bowls that looked startlingly like cockroaches with their legs pulled off, which failed to tickle my taste buds. The wine was good, though, as was the bread. And there’s always bread, isn’t there? No matter where you go in the world, there’s always bread in one form or another.

  And I’ve always wondered about this. How did Man discover how to make bread, eh? It’s quite a complicated process and you could never just stumble upon it by accident. But every culture appears to have invented bread. It’s one of life’s mysteries.

  ‘What do you think of the bread?’ asked the high priest, who sat on my right hand (well, not actually on my hand), for I had the big best seat in the house, right at the top of the table. On a big throne chair.

  ‘It’s splendid bread,’ I told him. And I told him also how I’d always wondered about how Man came to invent bread. And he told me that in his opinion there was very little mystery.

  ‘Just grind up your cockroach legs, mix with water and bake,’ he said. And I moved on to the soup.

  But I did broach the subject of George Formby. In as subtle a manner as I could. Because he was under the impression that I was a follower of the cult, a missionary or something, I supposed. So I had to tread with care.

  ‘Speak to me of the George,’ said I, ‘and of how the word of the George came unto your kingdom. Ee-oop, Mother.’ And I did a Formby giggle.

  ‘Ah,’ said the high priest, speaking with his mouth half-filled with bread, which frankly I could have done without. ‘In ancient of times, there was a former priest of Begrem, one who held to the old wicked ways of necromancy and the breeding of the Homunculus. He claimed that he had received a divine revelation that there was a world above this one. That we inhabit an underworld, this dull, monochrome, worthless world, but high above there is a beautiful world where there are more colours. And you are here, from this world, which proves it. Although we did get it wrong initially when we thought that you were an evil demon sent down to destroy us all. But I have apologised for that.’

  And I nodded and I smiled and said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘The priest had a mighty tower constructed that reached up to the rocky sky. And he set his underlings to cut into the rocky sky and tunnel upwards. And this they did for a considerable length of time, but as we have no concept of night and day, it is difficult to say quite how long.’

  And I made a certain face to this, but bid him continue anyway.

  ‘They tunnelled up and finally broke through into a tiled tunnel above. And it was not all mono-coloured. It was of many colours. And then they saw the folk above, gathered in congregation before the George.’

  And I did noddings of the head to this, recalling the George Formby movie posters I’d seen in the station above. The tunnellers had clearly broken through during one of the nightly showings.

  ‘And the priest passed down word of what he had seen, many words, the holy hymns - “The Lancashire Torreador”, “Limehouse Laundry Blues” and all the rest. Because he saw the George as a great vision upon the wall, far bigger than any man.’

  The movies for sure, I thought.

  ‘And he passed on all of these wonders to our people, who turned then from their old evil ways to embrace the hymns and sayings of the George, that all might be happy and go to the foot of their stairs in a state of grace and abiding joy.’

  ‘That’s a lovely story,’ I said.

  ‘Story?’ said the high priest.

  ‘Well, I know it’s all true, obviously.’

  ‘And so our people prepared to go above, to join the worshippers in the Tunnel of the George. But as the priest climbed up there, the terrible Wheelie Monster mashed him all to pieces.’

  ‘He was run over by a train,’ I said, with some degree of sadness. And some degree of a smirk, which I hid. But I could see the funny side.

  ‘A train?’

  ‘It’s a Wheelie Monster, like you said.’

  ‘And so we knew that we were not yet worthy, that we had not yet earned the right to go above. And so the tunnel was filled in and the great tower demolished. But our prophets claimed that some time in the future, someone would descend to deliver us from this terrible place and take us above into the Tunnel of the George.’

  ‘Yep,’ I said, raising my glass. ‘That’s me. But why did you think I was some horrid monster and want to stab me up with your big knife?’

  ‘It would appear that an underling turned over two pages at once of The Great Book of All Knowledge (and Selected Lyrics). For it is written that two shall come down from above, The first being the Deliverer, the second being the pinky-pink monster that must be all cut to pieces at the hurry-up.’

  ‘Well, that explains everything,’ I said. And I smiled. ‘Things are always so simple once they’re explained, aren’t they?’ And then I whispered an enquiry as to whether I could do anything I wanted to do with the golden girlies.

  And the High Priest said that yes, I could, but not at the dining table as it would upset his mum, who was sitting down at the end. And I waved to his mum, a lady in a golden straw hat, and she waved back to me.

  ‘Well, isn’t this all very nice,’ I said to the high priest. ‘But I seem to be all filled up now, so I think that perhaps I will skip pudding and take myself off to my sleeping accommodation with a couple of golden girlies.’

  But the high priest said that although he was happy enough with that, his mum, who was now very old, and who had always been a devoted follower of the George and had only clung on to life this far in the hope that she would live to see the Deliverer, would be sorely miserable if she was not able to bathe in my glorious presence for just a bit longer.

  So I said, ‘Okay, just a bit.’ And the high priest offered me more wine, and I most gratefully drank it.

  And although there were one or two things right in the forefront of my mind, these being scantily clad and golden, other thoughts came crowding in upon me. And these thoughts were all concerned with the Homunculus.

  And I did think a great deal about the nature of coincidence. Because there seemed to be a lot of it about. Because if these people hadn’t converted to Formbyanity, they would still be evil Homunculus fans, and I would surely have been sacrificed simply for the fun of it. But they were now goodies, all told, and they were anxious that the Deliverer deliver them from this place and lead them above.

  Although I did wonder whether they were going to be very disappointed when they finally arrived topside. They’d probably be impressed with the sky and the sun and the moon and all that kind of cosmic caper, but all the walking dead and the horrible pongs? They probably were not going to be altogether taken with that.

  But we’d just have to see.

&n
bsp; And then a thought struck me. And it was a wondrous thought. I had come here hoping for gold, and I had found plenty of that. I had also come here in the hope that there would be something that could aid me in destroying the Homunculus. And I had found that also.

  Because it wasn’t a something that I needed.

  And here, I suppose, I had a bit of a revelation.

  It was a somebody. And not just one somebody. I needed a lot of somebodys. An army of somebodys, to be precise.

  Because if I was to go against an Army of the Dead, then I would need an army of my own. And what better army to take on an Army of the Dead than an Army of the Underworld?

  And, satisfied that this was the solution, the answer to all my problems, I had another glass of wine.

  And then another.

  And then another one, too.

  62

  And then I awoke.

  Of a sudden, and quite painfully and not upon a golden bed, flanked by golden girlies. But still in my seat at the banqueting table, face down in a bowl of cockroach.

  And I went, ‘Whoa!’ And then I went, ‘Sorry, all, too much wine there, must have dozed off for a moment.’

  But I found, to my surprise, that I was addressing these words to no one in particular. In fact to no one at all. For all around me were empty chairs and dirty pudding dishes.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘They’ve all gone off to bed without me. What a bummer. I wonder where the golden girlies went?’

  ‘Up the cord,’ I heard someone think. And then I heard them say it. And it was the high priest’s mum, the lady in the golden straw hat. And she sat where she had been sitting, spooning spoons of pudding into her gob.

  ‘Up the cord?’ I asked her. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Up your cord, to the Tunnel of the George, as it is foretold in The Great Book of All Knowledge (and Selected Lyrics).’